The invention relates to an apparatus and method for picking mammalian and other animal cell colonies.
Automated apparatus for a variety of repetitive tasks relating to genomics and proteomics have become widespread. For example, automated apparatus have been commercially available for several years to perform microarraying, bacterial colony picking and gel coring [1-5]. However, an apparatus for automated picking of mammalian cell colonies has not been available.
Mammalian cell colonies are usually provided in a sample in one of two types. In the first type, the mammalian cell colony is held in suspension in a semi-solid medium. In the second type, the mammalian cell colony is adhered to a substrate and immersed in a liquid medium.
A problem in automating the mammalian cell colony picking arises for the first type in locating, removing and dispensing individual target cell colonies from the semi-solid medium. For adherent colonies, there is the additional problem that the colony needs to be detached from the substrate before it can be removed. The standard (non-automated) practices for detaching adherent colonies are by scraping with a scalpel, or other mechanical blade, and digestion usually with trypsin. Neither of these practices is well suited to automation.